Senate Budget Amendment for VAWA Programs

President Releases FY 2009 Budget

Victim Services Receive Devastating Cuts
February 2008

The President released his $3 trillion FY 2009 budget on February 4th to Congress which freezes domestic discretionary spending for the next five years. Overall, 61 percent of spending in fiscal 2009 under Bush’s proposed budget would be for mandatory programs such as Social Security, Medicare and interest on the national debt, with annual spending for discretionary programs making up the remaining 39 percent. Overall the President's budget eliminates 151 programs (savings of $18 billion) across all federal agencies and sets spending limits that will balance the budget by 2012. As expected, domestic priorities such as health care, education and victim related services were all slashed, while the Defense Department would receive a large increase. This increase does not even include additional spending for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan which the President says he will need in FY 2008 and the Congress will have to appropriate through supplemental appropriations measures.

Updated FY 2009 Appropriations Booklet Available!
January 2008
Includes funding levels for programs affecting sexual and domestic violence for Fiscal Year 2009 (Click here to view the updated VAWA Appropriations Chart for Fiscal Year 2009).

Reaction by Congress to this budget was definitely muted and many even declared it "dead on arrival", and by all accounts Congress plans on ignoring it, and as it did last year in FY 2008, the Democratically controlled Congress will write appropriations bills which reflect its priorities.

Key Highlights:
VAWA Programs
Overall, the President's budget proposes devastating cuts to victims of sexual assault, domestic violence, stalking, and dating violence. Specifically the budget includes a cut to OVW programs by $120 million, from $400M to $280M -- and would turn it into one block grant program again as the administration proposed last year as well. (CONGRESS SOUNDLY REJECTED THIS NOTION LAST YEAR).

The President also proposes three other new block grants: Violent Crime Reduction Partnership Initiatives to help communities suffering from high rates of violent crime; Byrne Public Safety and Protection (Byrne) Program to assist state, local, and tribal governments with their highest-priority concerns, such as violent and drug-related crime and presidential priorities, such as DNA backlog reduction and offender re-entry programs; and the Child Safety and Juvenile Justice Program which would consolidate existing juvenile justice and exploited children programs.

VOCA Fund
The President maintains the VOCA cap ($590 million) and once again calls for the elimination of the VOCA fund. Last year because of your calls and the efforts of our allies, the VOCA fund was saved from complete elimination in FY 2008. However, despite the best efforts of our champions in Congress, we were not ultimately able to raise the VOCA cap and the overall fund did sustain a cut of $35 million as part of a 6% cut to all Department of Justice programs. Already NAESV and its allies are joining together to support Rep. Ted Poe's (R-TX) efforts to raise the VOCA cap to $770 million in FY 2009.

Rape Prevention Education (RPE)
The President's budget proposes to cut RPE to $41.838 million which is a decrease of $178,000 from the FY 2008 funding level. Overall HHS VAWA funding is $172.3 million.

For more information, contact Ellen Fern at efern@wpllc.net or Ana Ottman at aottman@wpllc.net.